Here is a video about shit I have laying around that I like:
The Pez painting is 19:1 scale.
Archive for the ‘books’ Category
Liberal still isn’t a bad word.
Thursday, February 21st, 2008In case you haven’t been reminded the past few years (or specifically, since you gave up on everything on November 2, 2004), this little blurb from the kos (by Dan Kurtzman, from his book) is a nice refresher. If you’re like me, you completely shut off the sound or even mention of bullshit lib/con wars years ago when those assholes stole the country again, effectively destroying what I hoped would be the best decade of my life. Anyway:
Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism.Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and fantasizing about the apocalypse.
Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming aren’t just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.
Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.
Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if they’re too poor to vote Republican.
Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think they’re running a Taco Bell franchise.
Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good, and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in a state of total paralysis reading “My Pet Goat” while America is under attack.
And above all, liberals believe that it’s time to come together as a country and put a collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.
I felt that was a nice reminder as to why we’re involved so much right now. You are still licensed by law to be enraged at the state of your country. Just as I am licensed by virtue to be enraged at the state of American health care and samaritanism. Like I’ve been saying for a while, this year’s fight is a complete downhill battle. Let’s just be sure to do our fair share and win it, and win it clean to rub it in. Then maybe we can pawn off this cynicism for some idealism and maybe progress.
Most important is that we always keep Fox News on the air to prove our dedication to reason and the First Amendment, in reverse order. Also for comedy.
Ok. we now return to the anti-Hillary stuff.
p.s. lols@mccain sexstravaganza.
Reconsidering twttr.
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008I didn’t know what Twitter could do. Now, I know all kinds of things that it can do, and the best part is basically none of them matter still (so feel free to forget!).
When you get some friends hooked up on there it gets a lot better. Start tracking things with an instant messager and it becomes a living news ticker.
Knowing some things it can do is a good initial step in the direction of eventual progress. What I’d really like to see is the point of the damned thing. I can’t manage to describe it or find a description that really tackles what it’s for and why what it does could ever possibly matter. Also, how are twtr clients sensible when you can do everything a client does with almost any instant messaging program?
After just finishing James Gleick’s Faster quickly, I feel like I have some sort of problem with microupdates. I know I think I know I don’t really though.
Pattern Recognition: James Burke’s Crash Course History.
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007If you have the kind of brain aids that makes you constantly need to feed it more things, you might be interested in oddly detailed, guided tours through history. If you’re interested in that or learning how we learned how to learn, you’ll like this:
I know some people could be sensitive and call it dry, but James Burke is a pretty serious cut-up considering his field of study, and I’ve worshiped his books for years. Note that this is part 2 of 5 of episode 1 of 10. This can be a serious fast track to general knowledge of the history of science, and is almost an eerily appropriate primer for skeptical thought and understanding of the scientific process and how it effects history, all under the umbrella of chaos! This is multi-threaded teaching and thinking.
In the closing scenes of The Day the Universe Changed, Burke suggested that a forthcoming revolution in communication and computer technology would allow people all over the world to exchange ideas and opinions instantaneously. Subsequent events seem to have proven him right. His views of the connected nature of history have also been substantiated by recent research in chaos/complexity/network theory.
Essentially anything here is going to be similar or have an even wider berth, but I definitely suggest Connections as it caused a bit of an educational revolution that logically played out to its fullest form on the internet.
The Book of Mozilla.
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007If you’ve never heard of this and you use Firefox (or any mozilla browser, but you goddamned better be using Firefox), visit this link for the current piece of prophecy. Seriously.
This is just a goofy little thing the mozilla developers have always done. It is awesome. It is an example of a real easter egg.
Oh, and if you get the crazy idea in your head that you need Firefox 3 right fucking now like I did earlier today, you can just look at the obvious place for the vanilla builds, unlike I did earlier today. Why the hell I had to dig to find this dumb old obvious thing that hasn’t changed for years, I don’t know, but it bugs the shit out of me.
Also, if anyone knows of any good and current Firefox hack builds that seriously speed it up, tell me as soon as possible however possible.
A new version of Firefox, built for the new web, is exciting.
New movie releases videos. (don’t read that like a headline)
Saturday, October 20th, 2007I’ll be doing an occasional overview of movies being released on YouTube. You can find the first here, and the rest will eventually be here.
I really, really need to watch Videodrome again before I get myself tortured to death on an electrified clay wall. I’m about ankle deep in videos right now. For reference, I’m two feet past balls deep in drum and bass right now.
I have become completely convinced that YouTube is a fucking William Gibson novel still in progress.
